ABSTRACT
The intention in this essay is not to go into great detail about the techniques involved in fengshui, 1 the Chinese art of placement, which in lack of more precise terms we translate as ‘geomancy’. Many similar techniques are practised across East and Southeast Asia. Instead, I shall focus on fengshui as a system of statements on the man-nature relationship in an environment of holistic thought. Of particular interest is the use of natural metaphors: how the fengshui idiom provides common people in China with a means of paraphrasing relations in the social world, explaining not only hierarchy, social competition and personal success and failure, but also allowing strong anti-authoritarian political statements to be dressed up in a metaphorical language.
